


In Eternal Lines

by behindthec



Category: Broadway RPF, Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman, Wicked RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-05-02 19:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5260685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behindthec/pseuds/behindthec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They never made sense together, but they made something. Music, history, and love, not always in that order. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> All I wanted was cozy winter sex with tea and fireplaces and leaves falling, but it snowballed (ha) into this.
> 
> To my loves, B and B, for the great sex and for sharing in the joys and unjoys of homeownership.
> 
> Title from Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet. Fic complete.

 

* * *

 

The snow flutters down on the last night, sealing them in.

Idina can’t see from the bed, but she can feel New York slowly quieting as the flakes layer their first blanket over dirt-blackened sidewalks and worn roads, cleansing the city the only way it can: by concealment.

It can’t be cleansed, she knows, and nothing stays hidden forever.

Pressing closer, Kristin weaves their calves and feet together, leaving no limb untangled. Her hair fans across Idina’s chest, rising and falling with every breath, while her palm spreads over Idina’s breast and shifts until it’s pressed to the heartbeat.

Idina swallows the boulder lodged in her throat and inhales.

“Did we just fall in love?”

Kristin lifts her head, blinking. “When were we out of love?”

-

_**One Week Ago** _

It’s a little mysterious the way echoes evolve. Strip the walls of every photo and poster, every towel on a rack, every curtain; roll up every rug and haul out the furniture. With each subtraction, your words become just a little louder, a little more immortal.

Idina leaves them all. Painting can come last.

-

Kristin wasn’t part of the plan. She never was; not twelve years ago and not now. But she has this way of creeping in, taking up all the space in Idina’s head and pushing out everything else, everything that makes sense until she’s convinced Kristin’s the only thing that does.

They never made sense together, but they made something. Music, history, and love, not always in that order.

 _I’m home all week_ , Idina texts, kneeling over a cracked ceramic tile beneath the double oven.

_What’s home now? U got like 3 now ms fancy pants_

> _NY_

_Alone?_

> _Yep_

_What am I a booty call  
_ _I used to at least get a winkyface_

> _;)_

Kristin doesn’t respond, but the question echoes loud and clear.

 _You_ , of course, Idina doesn’t answer.  _You were home._

-

The doorbell rings sixty-eight minutes later, the moment Idina’s pried up the first damaged square from the kitchen floor. She’s not expecting it. It’s late as fuck notice, Kristin canceled the last two times, and no matter how dramatic her apologies, Idina couldn’t help but wonder if this era had fizzled to its end without her knowledge, making a quiet exit somewhere during years of dark intermission.

They’d have to stop sometime, her trainwreck of thoughts would cruelly remind her during the last precious minutes Kristin lay wrapped around her in the penthouse overlooking Central Park, in a hammock spread across the back lawn of an L.A. bungalow, in the humid kingsize room of a San Francisco hotel that one ancient June.

Half in shock, she answers the door with chisel in hand after stripping off the plaid button-down and safety goggles, leaving only spaghetti straps and ripped jeans. She’d forgotten she wasn’t wearing a bra until she opens the door and sees Kristin’s, plain as day through a sheer white top.

Idina gulps as her eyes drift downward over skintight jeans, but she can feel Kristin’s smirk without looking up.

Kristin cranes her head forward like a turtle, peering in at the mess of paint cans, tools, dropcloths, and Idina’s suitcase spilling out over the sofa, before raising an eyebrow.

“...No, really, don’t tidy up for my sake.”

Idina squints. “Are you wearing makeup? For  _me_?”

“Fuck off, I feel old today.”

“Just today?”

Kristin yelps and reaches out to beat Idina with her purse, but Idina catches hold of it and tosses it into the nearby button-tufted club chair Taye had ludicrously insisted upon, along with the bottle of wine in Kristin’s spare hand. She lets escape a burst of laughter, pulls Kristin over the threshold, swings the door shut, and pins her against the wall with little finesse. Halfway across the room a piece of artwork rattles beneath its confines of glass and wood, strangely relatable.

Kristin’s mouth is fire beneath notes of breath mint and chocolate, and Idina tastes and tastes until there’s nothing left but memories from the very first night.

Slender hands glide up and down Idina’s sides, finally hooking into belt loops to draw her closer as Kristin smiles against her lips and breathes, “Welcome home.”

If only.

 

-


	2. Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They weren't even young, but for a few clock ticks they felt positively immortal._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay. Thank that Chenzel hand-holding Tumblr post for getting this written at all. :)
> 
> Don't forget to read the Prologue first if you haven't yet.

**_2003_ **

_Idina's shy in some areas but not with her fortes, so not with sex, nor much with affection. She kisses all her female costars. Most of them kiss back. Some of them giggle and swat her away. Kristin's the only one who kisses her first and the last she would've suspected._

_In front of the cast and crew, dipping for effect, but still._

_"You're a good kisser," Idina tells her later, as high as Kristin is drunk, which isn't very._

_Kristin smiles, sets down the martini glass with a twisted stem that Idina's made fun of for an hour, and leans in with her hands braced on the arms of Idina's chair. Somewhere behind them, the bartender's taking orders from an incoming crowd and the DJ cranks an Aguilera remix and everything that isn't them, suddenly, darkens. Kristin beams, leans in, and presses the second open-mouth kiss of the day to Idina's wine-reddened lips._

_Their tongues don't meet; that would make it real, plus Idina knows she tastes like weed and it wouldn't be very considerate. Besides, it's just a show. Idina knows it's just a show. She doesn't kiss back, much, just winks when Kristin pulls away—but the moment she spots the blown pupils still expanding in Kristin's wild blue eyes, she wishes she had._

_"Wanna watch movies in my room?" she asks when Kristin's safely back on her own seat._

_"How do I know you're not gonna try to kiss me again?"_

_"You kissed **me** , you skank. Twice."_

_Kristin giggles. Her shirt's on the floor of Idina's hotel room before the door clicks to a close._

_They weren't even young, but for a few clock ticks they felt positively immortal._

  
-

  
Kristin spread naked across the sofa makes Idina feel a lot younger than she is, which only makes her feel older. It’s not two in the morning after Saturday’s second performance and mediocre midnight take-out. There’s no thrill of impending guilt, anymore. Kristin’s hair isn’t long anymore, and there aren’t traces of Ozian glitter catching the moonlight in the gold strands, on her shirt, across her cheek. The twinkle in her eyes remains, though—brighter than costume or makeup.

Idina doesn’t have her abs anymore, either. God damn it.

Kristin slides well-chosen black lace back up her thighs and grabs a sweatshirt from Idina’s overflowing suitcase, pulling it over her head. It further rumples her hair, and Idina hides a smile behind the clothes she’s gathering from the floor.

“What’s with the butch?” Kristin asks. “What are you even doing here?”

Idina sets her chisel and goggles atop the mantel and raises an eyebrow. “You come in my mouth four times in ten minutes and now I get the third degree?”

Kristin beams.

“Repairs. Upgrades,” Idina shrugs. “A five-year-old grew up here, this place needs work.”

“Why? You’re never here anymore.”

“I know. I’m selling it.”

The room is silent save for the clock, the same clock that ticked down their minutes together, time and again, through endless dawns and exhausted, aching goodbyes. Idina wonders who’s been changing the battery all these years, because it hasn’t been her and it hasn’t missed a beat.

Suddenly, every wall and crevice holds a fraction of time bursting to escape. The dent Kristin’s ostentatious gold ring made in the wall when Idina pinned her wrists above her head a little too hard; the chip in the hardwood from the vase knocked over the first time she carried Kristin to the bedroom. All-nighters with ice cream and DVDs, and the frosty hours spent on the balcony, catching snowflakes on their tongues with mittened hands wrapped around the crystal stems beneath the liquid that got them here.

“You can’t,” Kristin croaks stupidly.

Idina shoots her a dark glance, unsympathetic, and balls up Kristin’s delicate blouse to toss in her direction.

“I didn’t mean…”

“This was a getaway for you. You didn’t live here. You weren’t here for the fights and the screaming and crying. I’m done with it, I never want to see these walls again.”

Nothing is a surprise, Idina knows; nothing was out of Kristin’s scope of awareness. Even the things Idina didn’t tell her, she knew. Somehow she read it all, either in the lines set into Idina’s forehead, the tension in her jaw or the thin line of her lips pressed together. In the unexpected, fully expected text screenshots from Taye that Idina had found later in Kristin’s phone, captioned simply, _Is it me?_

 _No,_ Kristin had replied.

_She’s nuts, right?_

_No,_ she’d replied again, and Idina had stopped holding her breath. _You’re both headed on different paths. You can’t drag her down yours._

There’s a fine line between a poor match and a poor effort to hold onto a good match. Idina’s never quite been able to make the distinction, but she’s damn sure Kristin hasn’t either.

Idina senses the sting of the words before she sees Kristin’s blank face. She sets down the wrinkled wad of jeans in her hand and kneels in front of the sofa between Kristin’s instinctively spread knees.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know. I get it.”

“It’s time to let this place go. Not—”

_Not you._

Just the place. Just the walls, the brick and the wood—not the gasps, the heat, the sweat and the tears. Not the smell of Kristin’s perfume in the morning beneath notes of freshly ground Sumatra and buttered toast.

Kristin nods. “I know.”

Idina closes her eyes and drops her head forward. Small hands catch her on either side, rubbing comfort into her temples.

“Dee?”

“Mm.”

“Why the _hell_ aren’t you hiring someone to do this?”

Idina snorts and turns her face, smiling into Kristin’s palm. “Needed the alone time.”

“...Which is why I’m here.”

Idina groans. “Needed _away_ time.”

“I hear Aruba’s nice.”

“Oh my god, you are such a snob. This is therapeutic. Manual labor is therapeutic.”

“Well, in that case…”

Kristin sinks herself back into the sofa, raising an eyebrow and spreading her legs an inch further. Idina promptly slaps her lightly on the thigh and gets to her feet, ignoring Kristin’s pout.

“What do you need therapy for, anyway?”

“What _don’t_ I need therapy for.”

“Touche.”

Idina throws a sock at her.

“It’s _productive_ ,” she counters, pulling on clothes. “Something that’s not music, or performing, or parenting, or charity—y’know? And I’m learning stuff. I don’t want Walker growing up around nothing but spacy, artsy types who can’t even fix a toilet. I want him to be balanced, I want him to be able to take care of himself.”

“You wanted to see me.”

Idina glances up to see Kristin staring straight through her with a bemused, omniscient smirk, and looks away.

“A bonus.”

“A motive.”

“A _twat_.”

“You are what you eat…”

“Put your pants on and grab a hammer.”

“Honey, I am not that gay.”

Idina smiles. “Trust me, you are.”

  
-


	3. Monday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You shouldn’t hold me like that,” Kristin says._
> 
> _“Like what?”_
> 
> _“Like you’ll never be able to let go.”_

-

  


“Your smile is _criminal_ ,” is one of the first things Kristin had ever said to her. Idina found it beautifully forward, like the rest of her, and had trouble not staring at Kristin’s small, graceful hands leafing through the pages of her script for the rest of the day.

The hands tighten around Idina’s torso to draw her closer as Idina blinks her eyes shut against the sunlight. There’s a toolbox in the corner of the bedroom and a stack of paint cans in the other and the sun’s hinting at a day half gone already, but waking up in Kristin’s arms is not an event to be rushed.

Her face is pillowed between the two soft curves of Kristin’s breasts, and nothing has ever been, ever will be as close to heaven as this. She smells as divine as the first time Idina met her, feels as warm and soft as the first time she tasted her, and fits as snugly into her arms as the first time she woke up with her.

“You shouldn’t hold me like that,” Kristin says.

“Like what?”

“Like you’ll never be able to let go.”

  
-

  
Idina wastes no time leaving a note and bolting to Zabar’s when Kristin falls back asleep. Any time spent with Kristin is an opportunity to rescue her from the appalling habits instilled in her by southern living.

She loads up on the fruits and veggies most likely to be tolerated, returning laden with two bright orange and white bags, and sets them on the counter.

Kristin looks up from her claimed space on the floor in front of the flatscreen, loudly slurping from a Slushie cup with wide, innocent eyes. A half-eaten bag of Oreos litters the floor in front of her while the Real Housewives of Somewhere descend into bickering on the screen.

“God damn it, Kristi.”

  
-

  
“Can we have a paint fight?”

“No.”

“It’s romantic!”

“It’s romantic in Home Depot ads. In real life it’s messy and it cakes onto your skin and you have to scrub it off before you accidentally touch a door or something and it ruins your nice clean clothes.”

“Who paints in nice clean clothes?!”

“People in Home Depot ads.”

Kristin tsks, unsatisfied, and seals the wide blue tape over edges, crown moulding, corners and doorframes with a little less care than before, while Idina uncorks a bottle for what she’s deemed Painting and Pinot as twilight settles over the city.

Kristin makes penis jokes, giggles, and dabs her paintbrush on Idina’s forearm. It leaves a bright splash of crimson that makes Idina question accent walls altogether.

She wonders later, idly, if water-based paint would cause a yeast infection, but that’s Kristin’s problem now, stubborn child that she is.

There’s a line of misty gray paint in Kristin’s hair, and Idina can barely keep herself from waking her just to make the joke.

  
-

  
She comes up behind her, snaking a hand around Kristin's waist to splay across her belly and curving the other around one tiny shoulder. Her face buries itself in a mess of blonde—warm, tangled, and smelling of Idina's shampoo.

"Please let me fuck you again," she whispers imploringly into Kristin's neck, feeling the elegant curve of Kristin's shoulder shudder beneath her hand, abs tensing under the other.

"You're a _machine_." Kristin's head turns to the side to meet hers and nuzzles, softly. "I'm too old for this."

Idina can hear the smile in her voice and presses one to her temple in answer, closing her eyes against the blinding winter sun drenching them through the wall of glass.

"Mm, you're right. If you die having sex, what am I gonna tell the press?"

She feels Kristin's body tremble in silent laughter, then Kristin's hand covering hers over her stomach, sliding it lower until Idina feels the dripping warmth between her legs, and gasps.

"Still?"

Kristin shakes her head. "Again."

" _Fuck_."

"Please."

  
-


	4. Tuesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This could have been any day, every day, for years, forever._

-

  


“No, fuck, those are clean,” Idina rasps by way of greeting, sleepy-voiced as she shoos Kristin away from the dishwasher.

Kristin stays firmly planted to the spot, dropping a peanut butter-slathered knife into the silverware cube. One hand rests on a carefully cocked hip, elbow angled sharply similar to the eyebrow above.

“I emptied it.”

Idina squints against the blaze of 10 a.m. sun. “You did a chore?”

Kristin huffs and snaps the dishrag smartly against Idina’s bare hip. Idina yelps and lunges, spinning Kristin around and enveloping her from behind.

“You ass,” Kristin giggles.

“ _Your_ ass,” Idina counters, and gives it a squeeze.

Kristin turns in her arms and her tongue is right there, sharing hot hints of coffee and cinnamon with Idina’s waiting mouth, and this could have been any day, every day, for years, forever.

  
-

  
Kristin does laundry wrong. It never would’ve worked.

Idina watches her slap two sides of a t-shirt together and toss it onto the pile. Somewhere beneath her cringe lies a roaring mass of affection and amusement that she can’t allow to show.

“Stop judging me,” Kristin says without looking up.

“You fold wrong.”

“You pee wrong.”

“Excuse me?!”

“You button your pants and everything before you flush.”

“Yeah, so in case anything splashes it won’t touch my skin!”

“Put the lid down first!”

“I’m not touching the lid!”

“Oh my god, you’re washing your hands anyway.”

“If you fold it like that, you can’t fit as many in the drawer.”

“Who needs so many t-shirts they can’t all fit in one drawer?”

“Coming from someone who can’t wear a pair of heels in public more than once.”

Kristin smiles, contently defeated. She plucks a shirt from the heap and wraps it origami-like with care, while Idina pretends not to watch.

  
-

  
It’s the third time their fingertips brush amidst the smooth metal, frosted glass, and a tangle of wires that Kristin says, “So,” and Idina doesn’t have to ask.

“Hand me the pliers.”

Kristin dislodges a hand from the flushmount and reaches down the side of the ladder for the dangling tool, depositing it into Idina’s outstretched fingers.

“So,” she says again, “what about your guy?”

“He has a name.”

“I forgot it.”

“Liar.”

Idina’s lips quirk, but she tuts impatiently and Kristin adjusts her hands, offering better access to the wiring.

“Well?” Kristin presses.

“Well what?”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a nice Jewish boy, _mom_.”

“Does he…”

“He doesn’t care. We’re not exclusive.”

“Oh.”

The yellow connector clutched between her fingers slips, falling between them and bouncing off the hardwood. Kristin hands her a spare.

“After Taye, I said fuck it. I’m not gonna ask anyone to commit exclusively to me, and I’m not gonna do it either. More rules equals more problems. More mistakes to make. More ways to get hurt. People should be free. As long as someone comes home to me at the end of the day, or week, or month… I’m happy.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Is that why you always come home to me?”

Something jumps hopefully in the pit of Idina’s stomach—then, knowing better, settles obediently back into its cave, dormant.

This isn’t the time. The time is never.

“I come home to New York. You just happen to be here.”

“That’s harsh.”

“Kristin.”

The second connector clatters down into the glass dome. Idina swears loudly and creatively before relenting to look up.

Kristin is painfully, exquisitely beautiful, and this will never get easier.

“You made it perfectly clear,” Idina says slowly, “that you could never be my home, that you never would be, and you never wanted to be. So you don’t get to play the rejection card when you’re the one who pushed me away.”

Kristin stares blankly for a long time, then hands her another small bit of yellow plastic. She doesn’t argue, can’t argue, and that fact still cuts deep and fresh, like the wound never healed.

“Does he know about me?” Kristin asks quietly after a long time.

“No one knows about you.”

“Still?”

“Still.”

Silence stretches until Kristin’s mouth twitches, just a little. “Just ‘cause you never told anyone doesn’t mean no one’s figured it out.”

“Babe, _we_ never figured it out.”

  
-


	5. Wednesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Idina’s her first woman (she’s Idina’s ninth, as flawless as Beethoven’s)._

  
  
**_2003_ **

_ “I had a dream about you,” Kristin tells her with great flamboyance when Idina is offered the role. _

_ “Was it a good one?” _

_ Kristin beams. “I don’t remember.” _

Liar _, Idina thinks. _Beautiful, dangerous liar.__

_ Every inch of her skin smells like sweetened sin, worlds of unidentifiable aroma even after twelve hours in Idina’s bed. Idina’s her first woman (she’s Idina’s ninth, as flawless as Beethoven’s), but Kristin’s body is liquidly, unstoppably mobile against her, like she’s been training for it forever. Kristin notices, and every few weeks, it terrifies her. _

_ But Idina says “Stay,” and Kristin does, and does, until she doesn’t. _  
  


-  
  


“I’m just  _ saying._” 

Kristin is breathless now as her hair tumbles down in a flyaway heap over flushed, glowing cheeks and kiss-plump lips. The t-shirt is halfway across the room, the bottle of whisky precarious on the nightstand. Never one to shirk duty, Idina’s already pinching her bra hooks with one hand while the other delves beneath the skintight elastic of Kristin’s bright pink Lululemons.

“Keep ‘saying’ and I’ll stop.”

“Don’t  _ stop_,” Kristin huffs weakly. 

Her legs spread an inch or two further as she surrenders her head to the pillow, swiping strands from her face over heaving chest and unconsciously rising hips. The drink snakes warmly in Idina’s belly, and she feels herself begin to unravel.

“I’m just  _ saying_, if you don’t _ know  _ whether God exists, isn’t it better to believe in him anyway, in case it turns out he does?”

Idina does stop, then, as alcohol and laughter in tandem rapidly soak up her last stores of energy.

“Oh my god, do not throw Pascal’s wager at me.”

“Whose what?”

She laughs again, louder, but Kristin’s made it easy, welcoming two fingers into slick heat as Idina reclaims a single, dwindling shred of strength.  
  


-  
  


“It’s crooked.”

Kristin says it with impressive conviction for a 90-pound body currently housing four shots of scotch, with only the moonlight available for reference. Idina follows her eyes to the chandelier they hung just before lunch. Mimosas may not have been their finest breakfast decision to date.

It is, unequivocally, crooked.

Idina pushes herself off the pillow, takes hold of Kristin, and slides her ten degrees to the left.

“There.”

Kristin giggles. “Perfect.” Then, “I love you.”

“You fucking do not.”

But she inches closer, tucking her face into Kristin’s neck.

It’s half an hour later and an inch from sleep when she hears, quietly, “I do.”  
  


-  
  


A glance to her right tells her  _ 3:41_; to the left tells her why. 

“Can’t sleep?”

Still pacing, Kristin shakes her head dismissively. She’s always been too proud to burden others with it, or as she insists, too considerate. Idina suspects it’s much more to do with a pathological inability to show weakness, but she’s kept her mouth wisely shut for the better part of ten years.

“It makes me feel so weak.”

Kristin collapses on the chaise tucked against the bay window, and Idina wonders how long it’s been since there were any walls left between them.

“You’re not,” she says softly. “Your mind just turns on you. You’re not a wizard. You can’t just... use the Force.”

Kristin looks up, smirking. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Whatever, Jedi, wizard.”

“...named Moroni?”

“Came down from the Starship Enterprise.”

“Mmhm. Stick to Broadway, honey.”

Idina stumbles out of bed and crawls over on her knees, spreading Kristin’s apart to crouch between them.

“You’re not weak,” she repeats.

Kristin smiles, brushing a tangle of brown away from Idina’s face. “You’re beautiful.”

“You’re delirious.”

Kristin huffs and looks out the window. Reject one compliment and you’re unlikely to get another.

With her head resting on Kristin’s thigh and Kristin’s fingers in her hair, Idina begins to hum softly. She’s not sure of the tune, but after a few moments, Kristin joins in.

Not for the first time nor the hundredth, Idina considers how much time is left before the next time she says goodbye.  
  


-


	6. Thursday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re doing an album?"_
> 
> _“Sort of.”_
> 
> _“Me too.”_
> 
> _“Yeah?”_

**  
**  
_**2004**_

 _Kristin is talking. Idina isn’t listening. It will be the last thing Kristin says to her face for awhile and Idina would rather make it up in her head._  

_“Okay?” Kristin prompts._

_“What?”_

_“I’m gonna head out. Okay?”_  

_“Okay.”_

_“I mean, unless.”_

_There were no words hanging; this was enough._

_“No,” Idina says, “no, go. You’ve got an early flight.”_

_She won’t give herself another opportunity to break. She won’t give Kristin another opportunity to break her. She’s done breaking. She’s been pieced back together, and there’s no one left to hold her up but herself._

_Kristin kisses her on the cheek tenderly but doesn’t linger, and she’s gone._

_Idina types, “Unless what?” in their text window, but doesn’t send. At home, she deletes the conversation history and waits for every impossibility in turn._  

-

Kristin spends an hour on her hair and outfit before her Skype meeting with Disney. In order, Idina sits ten feet away and plays highly audible porn music for six and a half minutes, actual porn for seven seconds, and snorts loudly before snapping her laptop shut at a pointed glance from Kristin.

Ten seconds later, a red thong with black lace trim flies expertly across the room behind Kristin’s head, landing atop the back of the sofa. Idina contains herself long enough for Kristin to end the call, and dissolves into giggles once she’s rooms away and hears Kristin confidently assuring the marketing VP of a power outage.

They may or may not have run out of orange juice. (They haven't run out of champagne.)

-

When Idina Skypes with Walker, Kristin types busily on her laptop for an impressive length of time before Idina realizes she’s stopped and is staring at the space beyond the screen, bottom lip between her teeth.

“Mommy, is someone else there?”

Idina’s head whips back to her own screen. “Yeah, baby. I’ve got someone here helping me. Your momma’s not as good at this stuff as she’d like to think. I tried to put a light bulb in upside down.” 

There’s a giggle, musical and innocent and glorious, and Idina ends the session before she misses him too much to breathe. 

There is no pretense as she stands before Kristin, waiting for her thoughts to spill into the words Idina can already hear.

 _I’ll never be a mother._  

“You’re more,” Idina assures her as their fingers entwine. “You’re everything.”

-

The ceiling fan on high can’t erase the smell of sex, sweat, and ecstasy -- much less the taste. Kristin’s stepping over piles of clothes in a borrowed t-shirt and soaked panties, and Idina can barely hold herself up. 

Two boxes labeled “Keep” and “Trash” occupy the bedroom floor amid the contents of the closet littering every square inch of hardwood. The bottle of wine is empty but stands regal atop the tallest dresser, just in case they dare to forget what (they’d like to think) got them here. 

For the better part of an hour, Idina lets her uselessly rifle through an eon's worth of papers -- letters and bills and forgotten lyrics from long lost albums and longer lost lives. 

“What’s this?” 

The rhetorical tone only begs curiosity and Idina moves to stand behind her, squinting over her shoulder at a wretched mess of handwriting she recognizes from a very particular level of intoxication, on a very particular night, after a very particular fight.

 _2012_ _  
_ _Extraordinary_  

She watches Kristin’s fingers brush across near-illegible scrawl, following each faded, tear-smudged letter, until she reforms the words into coherence.

 _And once_  
_I thought I heard you say  
_ _you loved me_

Kristin looks up at her, wide sea-green eyes glowing and wet, all at once brighter than day and darker than night.

Idina shrugs. “I dunno. Something for my album.” 

“You’re doing an album?” 

“Sort of.” 

“Me too.” 

“Yeah?”

Kristin smiles, sort of, swiping at her eyes in the way she has that makes it look natural, like there wasn’t a well of reddening tears brimming to overflow only an instant before. 

“We should totally release on the same day.” 

Idina smiles. “Fuck you.” 

Kristin raises an eyebrow and bites her lip.

They’re actors. They can do it.

They’ve been doing it for thirteen years.

-


	7. Friday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“No one ever really changes, Kristi. Not for someone else.”_
> 
> _“They can.”_
> 
> _“But they don’t.”_

 

 

**_2013_ **

 

_ She gets to the shoot early for the chance to acclimate, prepare, locate the nearest drink -- only to walk in on Kristin in ripped jeans and a black tank top, barefoot, and slipping into a pair of fuck-me stilettos. _

_ There’s at least a hint of apology in Kristin’s radiant smile as she gestures to her makeup table. “Champagne?” _

_ They do remarkably well. They hug, politely, exchange pleasantries with genuinely pleasant intent, then touch only when instructed. Which happens to be a lot. All three photographers are unquestionably gay, and two are women. _

_ Hair touch-ups place them face to face, knees nearly touching. _

_ There’s more champagne. _

_ They make it to the outside of the building. Blinding sunlight attacks, burning them back to reality. _

_ Kristin says, “Where are you staying?” at the same time Idina asks, “Wanna grab some coffee?” and in fifteen minutes Kristin is spread naked beneath her, too-blonde hair over too-white sheets in a too-warm room, too much, too much, always too much of something, never enough of anything. _

_ “You changed laundry soap,” Kristin breathes into her neck when it’s over. _ _  
_

_ “You changed everything,” Idina counters. _

_ When Kristin leaves, Idina opens the mini bar and allows the inhibitions to melt before reaching for her phone. _

**_Don’t let the last time I saw you be the last time_ **

_ Kristin responds with a heart, four shots too late. _

_ Idina rifles desperately through drawers of room service menus and a Gideon’s Bible before locating the thin pad of stationery and a half-dry felt-tip pen. _

_ She scrapes ragged circles into the top half of the page until the ink revives. On the second half, she writes the date. The rest simply pours. _  
  


-  
  


Dawn takes them before sleep. As it turns out, deciding how much of Idina’s life can be reduced to landfill demands more energy than a day doles out.

Warm tongues, eager fingers, and sun-blanched walls bring them back late afternoon, just in time to pop open the Riesling before Thai shows up in crisp white styrofoam to cover the smell of sex with spicy red curry.

_ “Don’t you guys eat anything else?” Norbert asks, chomping down on an overstuffed spring roll before collapsing gracelessly into Idina’s dressing room sofa. “Isn’t spicy shit supposed to be bad for vocals?” _

_ “Wakes me up,” Idina says, popping a sauteed carrot disc into her mouth and glancing sideways at Kristin, who bites her lip. “Keeps me alert.” _

**_Hides the smell of pussy on your mouth, you mean?_ ** _ Kristin texts her, right there in front of everyone. _

_ Idina chokes on a grain of basmati and snaps her phone shut. Kristin waits for her to look before winking a bright blue-green eye, one hand tracing circles along her collarbone beneath an off-shoulder NYU t-shirt that so clearly belongs to anyone else. _

Idina remembers this Kristin. This is the Kristin who crawled inside her, stole her heart and turned her world inside out. Remembers her boldness, her daring and aplomb and impulse, replaced one by one over years of practice with caution, reserve, and repression.

They marathon  _ How I Met Your Mother _ because it makes Kristin laugh the hardest. When she’s laughing and drunk, that’s all she is. Idina can watch her as long as she wants and never face questioning.

In fact, she watches her too closely to notice the square glass bottle of dark liquid Kristin had tucked beside herself on the sofa until it’s too late, drunk to hell before Idina can stop her.

“They did it wrong,” Kristin says.

“Hmm?”

“Barney ‘n’ Robin. They coulda worked. They coulda... made it work. They coulda done it different. Better.”

“Yeah, but, y’know. Writer ego. They had it all mapped out.”

“It’s not fair.”

“No.”

“They could’ve -- Barney could’ve changed.”

“No one ever really changes, Kristi. Not for someone else.”

“They can.”

“But they don’t.”

Kristin doesn’t answer. Idina looks at her, at the strands of blonde glued damply to her cheeks with what she’d like to think is sweat.

When she turns, Idina imagines she catches a glimpse of the bold, young Kristin, the one who was ready to leap, held back only by lack of invitation.

She blinks at Idina, slow and sober. “But they can.”

Idina braces herself against hope before Kristin’s on top of her, shedding their clothes and replacing them with touches that send off sparks behind her eyelids.

_ They can, they can, they can…  _ echoes relentless, aching for validation.

_ But they don’t _ .  
  


-


	8. Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Don’t you know I’d stop loving you if I could?”_

 

 

**_2007_ **

 

_ Idina yells without saying much. Volume and substance tend to be inversely proportional. She knows this. It’s a flaw. Everyone’s told her. Most of them have left. Taye probably will, one day. He’s got one foot out the door already. _

_ Kristin doesn’t need to yell. Her words bite, sharp and carnivorous and precise. _

_ This is not what they were ever supposed to be. _

_ Idina doesn’t know how they got here. All she knows is that she came home from London, found another woman in their bed, screamed at Taye until she was hoarse, and wound up drunk in Kristin’s condo, blaming her for the universe and then some. It makes no sense. They never did. _

_ Kristin holds her ground for awhile, alternating placation with defense, sympathy with distance, until Idina pushes too far and finds herself locked in the hall. _

_ When the door opens loudly and aggressively five minutes later, Kristin announces without preamble, “Fuck you.” _

_ Idina looks up, wordless. _

_ “Don’t you know I’d stop loving you if I could?” _

_ Idina didn’t know. Idina isn’t sure she knows anything, or ever did. _

_ They don’t talk for a long time. _  
  


-  
  


Idina’s flight leaves Sunday afternoon. It feels like it’s taking her a lot farther than Los Angeles.

They’re down to hours, and they know it.

They dump the last heap of trash, pack the toolbox, and place each of their keys on the counter for the realtor to pick up.

Kristin stares at them for a long time.

“Did it ever mean anything?”

“What?”

“If we -- we could’ve -- did you ever want -- ”

She trails off on purpose. If Idina can’t decipher after all this time, maybe they were nothing at all.

Idina stares her down. She must tread cautiously. There’s too much pain in their past to risk any of it seeping through now. Respect is hard to build, effortless to destroy, and near impossible to regain.

“I wanted everything.”

“No -- you didn’t, we ended it, we -- ”

“Kristin, you  _ left. _ ”

“No -- no, you -- you  _ told _ me you were fine with me leaving, you never  _ once _ asked me to stay. You congratulated me. You smiled. You -- you got me a present.”

“What was I supposed to say?! ‘No, stop, put your career on hold for me even though I’m married to someone else.’ Seriously? You think I’m that selfish?”

“No I don’t think you’re  _ selfish _ , I think you’re a damn liar! You could’ve at least told me how you felt!”

Idina swallows. “How -- “ she begins softly. “How could you not know how I felt? Everyone who ever saw us knew how I felt.”

“I needed to hear it.”

“Would it have made a difference anyway? What good would it have done? Would you have stayed knowing I -- “

She can’t. They don’t say this. They don’t ever.

“Would you have left him?”

“For that level of risk? Probably not.”

There is a long, stilted silence.

“I wouldn’t have stayed.”

Idina sighs.

“Then it’s good, right? We did what we were supposed to do. We did the right thing. We got the fuck over it and let each other go, like we were supposed to.”

Kristin nods. “Yeah.”

Yeah.  
  


-  
  


"’There's a moment when I look at you and no speech is left in me. My tongue breaks, then fire races under my skin and I tremble… and grow pale for I am dying of such love, or so it seems to me.’"

Idina lets the thin, worn book fall shut and looks down at Kristin, at the expanse of golden curves and elegant lines, at clear eyes full of sparkle, at wine-stained lips, at the smile slowly morphing into laughter.

“What?!” Idina demands, unable to stop herself smiling.

“This is the gayest we’ve ever been,” Kristin informs her, wrapping herself around Idina’s middle. “You realize that.”

“Not when I had your legs over your head and three fingers inside you with my mouth on your nipple?”

“Nope. Reading Sappho aloud is the highest form of gay.”

“Sappho was bi!”

“Shut your damn mouth.”

They giggle stupidly, and Kristin settles, her head on Idina’s chest, breathing in the skin. Idina strokes her arm reverently, as she has a thousand times. Something and nothing changes.

Pressing closer, Kristin weaves their calves and feet together, leaving no limb untangled. Her hair fans across Idina’s chest, rising and falling with every breath, while her palm spreads over Idina’s breast and shifts until it’s pressed to the heartbeat.

Idina swallows the boulder lodged in her throat and inhales.

“Did we just fall in love?”

Kristin lifts her head, blinking. “When were we out of love?”  
  


-


	9. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I can’t keep saying goodbye to you.”_
> 
> _“Then don’t say it.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, guys. Feel free to hit me up at [wineandqueer.com](http://wineandqueer.com). :)

 

-

 

Kristin’s four-inch heels echo on clean, smooth hardwood. Each step bounces off bright white walls and shiny fixtures, everything fresh. Together they’ve created something new and untainted, like a life that could’ve been.

Crisply buttoned shirts and snug, belted jeans protect them from last-minute temptations. Space hangs loudly and openly between them, inches akin to miles.

Idina draws a breath.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

She waits for a defense, the reminder that Idina texted her first, after all -- but it never comes.

“I can’t keep saying goodbye to you.”

“Then don’t say it.”

Kristin smiles gently, kisses Idina on the cheek, and steps through the door.

The closing click echoes loudest, as rich in sensation as the lingering fire of Kristin’s fingertips on her cheek, but not half as warm.

Above, her eye catches a patch of wall that missed a second coat. It stands out, faded and out of place amid the expanse of solid, even white, yet proud in its imperfection.

There’s plenty of paint left. It wouldn’t be hard to whip out a brush, rag, and step stool. Five minutes, tops, and it would disappear into the wall as though it never existed.

She leaves it.

 

**_-_ **

**_  
fin._ **

 


End file.
